Public Safety Committee on April 26th, 2022

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will close by addressing Ms. Austin.

You concluded your opening remarks by saying that social media platforms played an important role in the fight against disinformation, and I agree with you. However, a lot of disinformation exists on those platforms.

Even we, elected members, are facing those kinds of problems. On the one hand, social media are our best friends because they enable us to reach out to people we represent, but, on the other hand, they are our worst enemies because we get bad comments and hate speech, if I may say so.

Despite everything, you announced something interesting, last Friday, to mark Earth Day. You said that misleading advertising on climate change will be prohibited to prevent the undermining of efforts to protect the environment. That decision came at a time when the platform's content moderation is being roundly criticized left and right by those who are accusing it of censorship and those who are criticizing its lax approach. I personally think this is a wonderful announcement and a good decision.

Can we expect a similar policy from Twitter to counter hate speech and disinformation?

[Michele Austin]

The policy that we announced with regard to climate change advertising is in the spirit of the policies we've also announced that have banned political advertising on Twitter as well as advertising with regard to COVID‑19. So the company certainly is not afraid of making bold—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

In 10 seconds, please.

[Michele Austin]

—policy statements.

With regard to misinformation, maybe I can answer that later in another question. There's a lot there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I now invite Mr. MacGregor to take his 90 seconds.

Go ahead. The floor is yours, sir.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Austin, I'll ask you my last question. I know that for both Meta and your platform, it is a struggle to.... You do care about your platform. You want to ensure that there are legitimate users. I guess what I wanted to know from you is, can you inform our committee on what the trend has been like over the last number of years over the unverified accounts, the bots, the ones that are pushing extremist content?

Is it like a game of Whac-a-Mole? How difficult is it, from your company's perspective, to actually verify that an account is a real person? What are some of the ways in which people are finding unique features in your platform to exploit the loopholes that might exist?

[Michele Austin]

I don't think it's unfair to say that everybody is certainly trying to game the system. We introduced a new product where you could choose who you wanted to have reply, and many people tweeted out, “Reply to this tweet if you want to earn a million dollars”, and of course didn't allow replies. I mean, gaming the system is really a big deal.

Our verification policy was on hold for two years. It has recently been reintroduced. We are focusing on six areas, which I'm happy to inform the committee about later. It's not perfect. We get a lot of complaints, which are completely justified. We are doing our best to try to make sure that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds.

[Michele Austin]

—we understand exactly who is tweeting out before we give them the blue check mark.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would invite Mr. Shipley to use his two and a half minutes.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to start off with Ms. Curran.

Ms. Curran, earlier in your comments, you mentioned—and correct me if I'm wrong, please—that you have banned over 250 white supremacist groups from Facebook. Is that statement correct? Did I write that down right? Is it 250?

[Rachel Curran]

It is correct, yes.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Would some of those groups be the same groups that keep re-forming under different names?

[Rachel Curran]

Maybe I'll turn it to my colleague, Mr. Tessler.

[David Tessler]

We have, as Ms. Curran said, invested and continue to invest heavily both in terms of people—we have over 40,000 people—and in terms of technology to make sure that we can protect our platform from this harmful content.

We know that this is an adversarial space. We know that these 250 hate organizations that we've designated and others are trying to evade our enforcement, so we are constantly trying to improve and adjust in order to keep those organizations off our platform. Once an organization is designated—

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you. I only have a short amount of time. I'm sorry to cut you off.

My next part of that question was going to be, how many groups in total.... We're talking about 250 white supremacist groups. What are some of the other groups? The number of 250 astounds me—good work, obviously, for removing them—but could you tell me how many groups in total have been banned from Facebook and what are some of the other groups?

[David Tessler]

We at Meta try to be as transparent as possible, but as I said, we know this is an adversarial space. We know, as our colleague from Twitter said, that they're trying to game the system and avoid enforcement. We also need to be careful and protect the safety of our employees, so we don't publicize the entire list of our dangerous organizations and individuals.

What I can say is that we've developed definitions, along with experts externally, for terrorism, for organized hate and for organized criminality and other categories under our dangerous organizations and individuals policy. We have a process to designate groups in those categories, and that's a continuous process that we undertake.

[Rachel Curran]

Yes. I will also say that we designated the Proud Boys in 2018, well ahead of the Government of Canada.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Tessler, you mentioned a couple of times that you have 40,000 people globally who are monitoring this post. How can anybody possibly be monitoring or instructing 40,000 different people on what is acceptable and what is not acceptable?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

In 10 seconds, please.

[David Tessler]

We've developed very clear definitions, and those are public in our community standards. We use those clear definitions for terrorism, for organized hate, etc., to be a guide for us as to which groups we designate and remove from our platform.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chiang, I turn to you for the last two and a half minutes of this panel.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is directed towards Meta.

In your opening remarks, you mentioned that Meta aims to prevent potential offline harm that may be related to content on Facebook. How do you square that aim with the fact that the Ottawa convoy blockade, which called for the removal of the democratically elected Canadian government, was able to organize the occupation through Facebook?

[Rachel Curran]

I'll start this one off.

Expressing opposition to government mandates is not against our community standards, and so we allow that on our platforms.

Maybe, Mr. Tessler, you could get into a bit more detail about what we saw with respect to the convoy protests.

[David Tessler]

Yes, definitely.

Let me just be clear, there is no place on our platforms for violence or hate. Our policies are clear. We do not allow content that is violent or incites violence or includes hate speech. When we find that content, either through human review or through out investment in technology, we will remove it. We did not see a significant number of dangerous organizations or much individual involvement in the convoy blockade and protests in Canada.